Miguel Perez Jr. discovered that two tours of duty in Afghanistan with the US Army and an accompanying case of PTSD are no shield from the US immigration laws.

Because of a 2010 drug conviction, Perez, 39, sits in an ICE detention center in Kenosha, Wisconsin, awaiting possible deportation to Mexico -- a country he left more than three decades ago.

He said he fears deportation would do more than separate him from his family in the United States, including his two children born here. He thinks it could kill him.

The substance-abuse and mental-health counseling he desperately needs would not be readily available in Mexico, he said, and he predicts that drug cartels would recruit him because of his combat experience and murder him if he didn't cooperate.

So he started a hunger strike on Wednesday, not long after his latest setback in federal court

"If they are sentencing me to a certain death, and I am going to die, then why die in a place that I have not considered my home in a long time?" he said in an interview with CNN.

"There is saying that goes 'I'd rather die like a man than live like a coward.' In Mexico, I will have to live in fear, like a coward. No. I'd rather die right here, like a man fighting against something that makes no sense -- this thing of deporting veterans does not make sense even if they try to justify with the law."

Although citizenship also comes at a price....he learns how this country ignores it's veterans.

I was under the impression (maybe falsely) that any foreign national that serves time in the US Armed Forces is given citizenship if they want it. I know a lot of guys from the Philippines that are citizens because of being in the US Navy.

I think you're right. My bunkie in boot camp (he was top bunk, I was bottom) was a Portuguese immigrant named Figueredo. He joined while being a green card holder--still not a citizen. He said he would be granted citizenship upon successful completion of his term of enlistment, 3 years, I think it was, although he may have signed up for 4, he was just that gung ho. But I think he had to get at least 3 in for the citizenship privilege.

One other bennies of his status: he could quit anytime he wanted without the usual repercussions us natural borns would have encountered. And the D.I.'s never failed to remind him of that fact on an almost daily basis.

What they didn't remind him of, but he was very aware of, is that he would be subject to immediate deportation had he quit.

I seem to recall part of Obama's ExO'd DACA act was to grant citizenship, or maybe legal status, to any dreamer who had served honorably. I could live with that, but I don't like the unconstitutionality of the way the DACA thing came about.

Maybe this guy should apply for dreamer status. I hear they're pretty lax in their qualifications for being a dreamer. He'd probably get in "under the wire", so to speak--as long as he didn't bump an MS-13 gang member out, getting in.